Forgotten Heroes
by Rhi
Summary: Post NWN2. What happened to the Knight Captain after the battle was over? Many believed she had died, but she survived...along with at least one other. The odd pair find themselves trapped in a strange realm, and must try to work together again to escape.


**Forgotten Heroes  
_Chapter One_**

* * *

The last thing she remembered was...darkness. Darkness and a terrible weight pressing down on her, crushing the very air out of her lungs, and then...nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing had a color. It was grey and drab and endless, with no depth to it at all, and at the same time seeming to go on forever. It made thinking difficult. It made remembering difficult. She wasn't even sure who she was now. Was she part of the nothingness, or was it a part of her?

For a while, she drifted. She wasn't sure for how long - one moment it felt like the nothingness had surrounded her for an age, and the next, mere moments had passed since...

Since what? Here, in the nothingness, there were no memories. Perhaps there had never been any to begin with. It certainly felt that way, with the not-quite-darkness all around her, the dark grey of oblivion stifling every thought.

And then, at the edge of vision - if that was what it was - light trickled in. Faint, green light that grew slowly until it was a fuzzy blur obscuring the nothingness, blotting it out. Feeling trickled back, too - she had arms, legs, a head; but everything ached. She almost wished for the numbness of grey oblivion to come back, but then she opened her eyes.

She was lying on the ground staring up at the treetops. Lying on the muddy ground - it was mostly water mixed with dirt and reeds and dead plants. A swamp?

A feeling of familiarity overtook her, but she couldn't quite place it. Thinking still hurt. Everything still hurt.

It took a while, but eventually she coaxed her aching limbs to move. Even to twitch a finger was agony, and sitting up set every muscle in her body on fire. She couldn't even manage to groan.

She sat like that for a while, hunched over in the mud, the damp, muggy air burning in her lungs. Once the pain had subsided enough to think straight - a little straighter, anyway - she lifted her head slightly to take a better look around.

It was a swamp. She was lying in a shallow pond in the middle of it, and mossy branches drooped downwards to touch the cloudy water. The usual swamp sounds seemed loud in the silence - insects chirping, birds calling, frogs and toads croaking from their dark hiding-places. There was no one else around.

She dragged herself out of the pond onto a patch of dryer, moss-covered land, and lay on her stomach panting for a while. She was exhausted, exhausted to the bone; consciousness was such an effort. She ached for oblivion...she wanted to slip away again and drift, drift forever...

At some point, she must have closed her eyes. The greyness edged in and the pain faded away. She thought for a moment that it was going to take her, and smiled, letting it engulf her...

And then there was a voice.

"Wake up, Captain!"

* * *

Someone shook her by the shoulder, and she groaned. The darkness was fading away now, replaced by the green marsh-light as she opened her eyes and was rolled onto her back.

"Good. You're not dead," said the voice. It sounded familiar, as much as anything could feel familiar right now. "It seems the warlock got something right for once."

"Warlock?" Her voice, when she got it to work, seemed to come from far away. It was such an effort to speak. Her eyelids drooped.

A gloved hand slapped her face, hard. "Pay attention!" She opened her eyes again, but the face above her was little more than a blur. "Yes," it continued, "The warlock. Ammon Jerro. He opened a portal and managed to get us all out before the whole place came crashing down on us. You were struck by some falling wreckage, more luck, and I had to drag you out. You owe me, Atherae."

Atherae...yes, that was her name, wasn't it? She was Atherae; Harborman, Druid of Silvanus, Knight-Captain of Crossroads Keep; the Shard-Bearer, destined to defeat the King of Shadows with the re-forged Silver Sword of Gith...

"The King of Shadows!" she gasped, sitting up so fast it sent her head spinning. She forgot about the face, the voice; suddenly she remembered everything that had gone before - the trip to the Vale of Merdelain, the defeat of the Shadow Reavers, the confrontation with Black Garius and yes, the King of Shadows. "Is he-"

"Dead, yes. I must say, Captain, I never thought you had it in you. If I had, well, maybe things would've been different," the voice continued, this time with a lazy, sarcastic drawl to it. Suddenly, Atherae remembered.

"Bishop!" He'd betrayed them. Betrayed them all and gone to stand with Black Garius and his King of Shadows, the very being they had been working together to defeat. It had been so sudden, she hadn't even time to wonder why...but he had told her, hadn't he? He didn't like to be tied down to a person, to a feeling.

She couldn't remember what she had said next, but Bishop had walked away. And then, during the fight, that great hulking mass of a demon had reared its whip, about to strike her down...and an arrow had thunked into its head and it had fallen, crashing to the ground.

The arrow had belonged to Bishop. He had come back to fight at her side. He'd said nothing, just looked at her with those dark eyes of his, and for a moment time had seemed to stand still - but then Garius renewed the attack, and they had plunged once again into the fray.

His face came into focus in front of her. Those same dark eyes, the scruffy brown hair, the fine patina of stubble lining his jaw, the mouth curled into a permanent scowl. It was still there, even now, as he watched her silently.

"You're alive," she said quietly. "I didn't see you, after we defeated the King of Shadows and the roof started coming down. Everyone was running...I didn't see you..."

"You're repeating yourself, Captain, and stating the obvious," Bishop said dryly, "That's never a good sign. Perhaps you were hit a little too hard on the head." He reached out then, brushing muddy hair away from her face and tucking it behind her pointed ear. "You all right?" he asked gruffly.

"Why do you care?" Atherae was beginning to feel a little more like herself again, now that she could actually remember who she was. "You betrayed me. Us," she amended, frowning vaguely. Bishop opened his mouth, no doubt to point out just why he had done that, but she interrupted him by glancing around and asking abruptly, "Where are we?"

Bishop sat back on his haunches. Atherae could see that he, too, was covered in mud and looked the worse for wear. "I don't know. Ammon may have gotten us out of there, but where he's gotten us to...it looks like the Mere, but it doesn't feel like the Mere." He snorted. "Could be any swamp in Faerun, but I'll tell you this - it's making my skin crawl. Can you stand?" He rose to his feet.

"Where are the others?" Atherae asked, ignoring his hand and the shooting pains up her spine as she clambered to her feet. To her dismay, everything still ached.

Bishop dropped his hand with a scowl. "Don't know," he said. "I thought with portals everyone was supposed to end up in the same place. That warlock's as useless as the rest of them."

"Don't say that. At least they didn't run off to join the King of Shadows as soon as things got difficult." Why wasn't she killing him right now? She ought to, after what he had done. But as soon as she'd seen him in the battle, she had known...

"Now, now. There's no need for that. I did save your life in the end, didn't I?" Bishop said lightly, but there was something dark and dangerous flickering in his eyes. Atherae shook her head.

"Forget it. We need to find out where the others are. Then we need to find out how to get back to Crossroads Keep."

Bishop looked at her. "Why do we have to go there? We could go anywhere, you know. They probably think you're dead. They probably think we're all dead." He sounded strangely gleeful at the prospect. "We could go to Waterdeep, to Baldur's Gate, even as far as Amn! I hear there are some very...interesting forests there." He leered at her.

How could he go on and act as if nothing had happened? She turned away, disgusted, and winced as a sharp pain in her side made her clutch at her ribs.

Suddenly Bishop was behind her, his voice soft. "You're hurt. Let me take a look."

"Bishop, you're not a healer, you're-" she began as he pried away her hand and surveyed the gash in her armor. Atherae hadn't even noticed it at first - everything had hurt, but now all the individual pains were making themselves known. Like this one. "Must've gotten that during the battle," she said, feeling a little light-headed as Bishop lowered her to the ground with her back propped against a tree. "I ran out of healing spells halfway through..."

"I've got bandages," Bishop said. There was a peculiar intensity in his eyes as he took out the small Healer's Kit and used it to mend her wound. His hands were surprisingly gentle. "Stay still, you stupid sprite," he growled as she twitched and hissed in pain.

"I'm an Aasimar, not a sprite," she reminded him, gritting her teeth.

"More like Ass-imar," he shot back. Suddenly, healing warmth spread through her under the ministrations of his hands, and she sighed in relief, slumping back. "Better?" he asked.

"Much." She hesitated before adding, "Thank you." Then she hesitated some more. He wasn't moving away; just crouching there, looking at her, his gloves covered with her blood. Noting her gaze, Bishop slowly took them off and wiped them on the mossy ground.

"Bishop, why did you-" she began, but he cut her off.

"We should get going if we want to find the others." This time, when he stood and offered her his hand, she took it.


End file.
